A surveillance video at the Express Lane convenience store shows a robber wearing dark clothes and a gold necklace on the right in the store before he grabbed cash from the till and ran.

ALBANY — The robberies started at 5:16 a.m. when a thief grabbed money from a cash register at the Flash Foods on the 2400 block of North Slappey Boulevard, said an Albany Police Department official.

A surveillance video at the Express Lane convenience store shows a robber wearing dark clothes and a gold necklace on the right in the store before he grabbed cash from the till and ran.

“Officers responded to the location in reference to a robbery by snatching,” said Phyllis Banks, police spokeswoman. “The clerk informed them that an unknown black male grabbed money from the cash register while she was with another customer.”

After a similar theft and a car theft, police arrested and charged Kenya Martin, 33, with two counts of robbery by snatching, theft by taking and motor vehicle theft after determining he was the man clerks had described, Banks said.

Banks said that clerks at the first store described the robber, who ran away with an undisclosed amount of cash, as being 6 feet tall and weighing about 350 pounds.

Three hours later and less than seven miles away at 8:20 a.m., a thief again snatched cash from a clerk’s open register drawer at the Express Lane store on the 3900 block of Gillionville Road, a police report stated.

The description of the Express Lane robber matched the description of the thief who hit the Flash Foods earlier, the report added. And now the investigating officers had video of the robber.

The thief didn’t rest, Banks said. About an hour later, a black Ford Contour was reported stolen from the lot of Motel Six at 201 Thornton Drive by a thief who fit the description of the convenience stores’ robber, she added.

The Contour was recovered at a third convenience store, Homerun Foods at 1621 E. Oglethorpe Blvd., by day-shift officers.

Night-shift officers wrapping up paperwork in the East District dropped the papers and ran to a call about a 6-foot tall, 350 pound man walking on Franklin Street.

The suspect has been released from the hospital and has been booked into the Dougherty County Jail.